Scintillation materials, or scintillators, refer to materials that emit light in the presence of ionizing radiation. Because scintillators exhibit luminescence when excited by radiation, these materials are often used to detect radiation from impinging electrons, protons, neutrons, alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, and x-rays.
Inorganic and organic scintillators find use in medical and industrial applications, and improved scintillator materials have continuously been developed since the time Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen first discovered the existence of x-rays from a barium platinocyanide screen. However, current sensing systems may display hygroscopic characteristics (where the absorption of moisture from the environment render the scintillating materials inert or otherwise useless), require large spatial dimensions, have complicated or expensive fabrication steps, or depend upon cryogenic cooling. Furthermore, detection sensitivity, such as the modulation of wavelengths to frequency regimes that enable maximal detection efficiency, presents additional considerations for deploying scintillator material based sensing systems.